HR: 0800h
AN: C21A-1060    [Abstracts]
TI: Mapping "At Risk" Snow in the Pacific Northwest
AU: * Nolin, A W
EM: nolina@science.oregonstate.edu
AF: Oregon State University, Department of Geosciences Wilkinson 104, Corvallis, OR 97331 United States
AU: Daly, C
EM: daly@coas.oregonstate.edu
AF: Oregon State University, Oregon Climate Service 316 Strand Agriculture Hall, Corvallis, OR 97331-2209 United States
AB: One of the most visible and widely felt impacts of climate change is the change (mostly loss) of low elevation snow cover in the mid-latitudes. Snow cover that accumulates at temperatures close to the ice-water phase transition is at greater risk to climate warming than cold climate snow packs because it affects both precipitation phase and ablation rates. Changes in such climatologically sensitive snow packs can impact hydropower generation, reservoir storage, rain-on-snow floods, and winter recreation. Using a climatologically based global snow cover classification (Sturm et al., 1995) "at risk" snow is defined as lower elevation maritime and alpine snow classes. This original classification was produced globally at 0.5-degree resolution and used monthly means of temperature and precipitation as well as vegetation cover to map snow climates. In this work, the classification is updated for the Pacific Northwest region using fields of temperature and precipitation from PRISM as well as MODIS-derived global maps of vegetation cover. This new classification has significantly improved grid resolution (4 km x 4 km) and is able to clearly identify regions of ephemeral and lower elevation maritime and alpine snow that are thought to be at risk in a climate warming scenario. Results indicate that the economic impacts of this shift from snow- to rain-dominated winter precipitation that lower elevation ski areas in the region would experience significant negative impacts.
DE: 0736 Snow (1827, 1863)
DE: 1621 Cryospheric change (0776)
DE: 1637 Regional climate change
DE: 1833 Hydroclimatology
SC: Cryosphere [C]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005